Use Your Allusions?

Tuesday, a student played a song by Twenty One Pilots in class for a presentation, and this was the first time I heard the band and I told the students that Twenty One Pilots sounded a lot like Neutral Milk Hotel and the class said, "What?" and I had to explain to them about Neutral Milk Hotel and Jeff Mangum, and the next day one of the students, in preparation for "improv night," was dressed all in white: white shirt, white socks, white shorts, white tennis sneakers and a white headband and I told him he looked ready for Wimbledon and, once again, the class said "What?" and I had to explain to them about Wimbledon: the grass courts, the strawberries and cream, the fact that it's a tennis tournament . . . and I think I'm going to stop alluding to things in class, because it's too exhausting.

More Wild News From Dave's Closet!

Not only did all my white socks disintegrate on the same day, but both my belts -- black and brown-- fell apart within a week . . . so I went belt shopping, but instead of buying two belts, I bought a reversible belt, and saved the price of one belt . . . yes!

Breaking News from Dave's Sock Drawer!

Yesterday, I noticed that all my white athletic socks were torn through at the heel . . . is this a weird coincidence or an insidious plot of planned obsolescence?

A Review of Dave's Most Ubiquitous Wardrobe Malfunctions

Lately I've noticed that if I don't wear a belt, then my pants fall down-- this was never a problem for me until recently and I'm not sure why it's happening now, but it's not the kind of thing you can ponder, it's the kind of thing you have to address-- and I'm dealing with this on top of my other clothing problems, which I've gone over in previous posts, but I'll list them all here for your convenience:

1) my neck is too thick to comfortably wear a dress shirt or a tie;

2) I can't wear a hooded rain jacket unless I wear a hat;

3) scarves perplex me;

4) duck boots pull my socks down;

5) I tear apart a lot of socks

6) I need to tuck my sweatpants into my socks when I ride a bike;

7) in general, socks suck.

Vacations With Kids Are Not Really Vacations

Another phenomenal Vermont vacation, full of snowboarding, skiing, great local food/beer, and plenty of anxiety (not only anxiety from supervising my children on the mountain, but also in our rented house-- a beautifully converted barn in Stockbridge which contains a couple of spiral stair-cases, which seem excellent in theory-- but spiral staircases with smooth and worn wooden risers are death-traps if you're wearing socks-- I slipped and fell hard-- and while my kids are getting better and better at navigating the mountain, they are also getting good enough to hurt themselves-- Alex whacked his head when he caught an edge snowboarding, but he was wearing a helmet so he only suffered a bump on his head and a bruise on his face, but no concussion, and Ian twisted his knee when a little kid cut in front of him) and after three days straight of riding-- longer days than usual because we met our friends on the mountain and peer pressure really motivates kids to keep on keeping on-- so after three long days, we finally took one off to relax, but we also promised my son Alex that we would play Settlers of Catan on this day off, and not just regular Settlers of Catan, but the new very-advanced "Cities and Knights" add-on that he got for Christmas, and it took four hours to finish the game (which I won!) but we took a break in the middle of the game for some sledding (Alex befriended some friendly Stockbridge locals) and then a trip to Rochester, Vermont to eat lunch at the Rochester Cafe and Country Store, which I highly recommend: the town is scenic, surrounded by mountain peaks, and the food and raspberry/peach pie at the cafe is super-delicious . . . and I hate pie; while I'm at it, I'll also recommend my favorite local beers from the trip: Rock Art American Red Ale and Alesmith IPA (and it's VERY important to have good beer on hand when you're playing a four hour board game with children).

It Works For Me

I've found that in the winter, if I take my dog for a bike ride or a hike through the park, I get far less muddy if I tuck my sweat pants into my socks, and while I realize this looks ridiculous, I'm just going to apologize in advance and do it anyway.

Motivation and Consciousness (and Socks)

After I get out of the shower, on the weekend, I'll throw on some clothes -- but not socks -- and then I'll go downstairs to do whatever . . . but I know that invariably, I will want socks, but I neither put them on then, when it is convenient, nor do I carry a pair of socks downstairs with me, to put on when I will inevitably need them (and Saturday morning, when I realized this ineffective habit, I still did nothing to correct it).

No Way You're Beating This Statistic (nor would you want to)

It's been very humid lately here in central New Jersey, and so when I try to yank my socks onto my sweaty feet, I'm ripping one sock for every four sock-putting-on attempts.

Another Great Free Idea

Usually, my wife folds my laundry -- though I tell her this is unnecessary -- so this time, when she finished the load, I took the basket and threw all the clothes on our bed, and then I was able to grab the socks and t-shirts and sweat pants and other stuff that doesn't need to be folded and put them directly into drawers, and then I put the shirts and pants on hangers . . .  and so avoided any intermediate folding stage for those as well . . . but the problem with this method is that you have to do it right when the laundry gets done, and I don't know about your house, but in my house, nobody likes to put away clean laundry; even my wife -- who is perfect in all other regards -- has trouble completing this task in a timely manner.

Is Something Wrong With Me? Besides the Obvious . . .

Last weekend I did a lot of walking up and down the sledding hill in my duck boots, and I eventually grew so annoyed that I had to switch to my regular hiking boots because when I wore the duck boots my socks kept getting pulled down . . . somehow the duck boots were literally sucking my socks right off my feet, and I am wondering: is something wrong with my feet? is something wrong with my boots? does this happen to anyone else?

Syrian Memory #2

The Umayyad Mosque, the third holiest place in the Muslim religion (and the site has been a holy place for thousands of years: a temple to Haddad, and then Jupiter, A Greek Orthodox Church supposedly harboring the head of John the Baptist) is awe-inspiring-- fields of polished marble, walls of mosaics, and a monumental mosque housing a Shrine to Hussein (Mohammad's grandson) where Shiites were busy kissing a grate . . . the area was so holy that you couldn't wear your shoes, so I left my old stank Nikes in a pile of other shoes by the door, but when I returned, they had been stolen-- obviously the person who stole them didn't know that this was the third holiest place in the Muslim religion-- and then, conveniently, there was a youngster outside the gates of the mosque who took a quick look at the white man in his socks and immediately led me to the shoe souk-- where I'm sure he received a commission-- and his cousin sold me the crappiest pair of sandals in the Middle East.

Busted!

My son Alex has had quite a week: first he confessed this lie, and then-- when he was on the way out the door for school on Thursday, my wife noticed a bulge in his sock, and when she asked him about it, he said it was "just bunched up," but upon further interrogation and a search, she found that he was attempting to smuggle "Now and Later" candies to school . . . and if he wasn't wearing shorts he might have gotten away with it (or if he would simply put them in his pocket, but he obviously knew he was doing something illicit and you don't put illicit stuff in your pockets, you put it in your socks).

I Use Probability to Solve A Marital Mystery

Once again, I discovered my gym bag in the closet upside-down, and I was not the one who did this-- because I never put my gym-bag away, nor do I ever zip it shut-- but my wife often throws it into the closet and if it lands upside-down, then my gym equipment falls out of the bag:  my goggles and socks and deodorant, etc.-- and though I noted this with frustration for years, it finally dawned on me . . . perhaps my wife was throwing the gym bag into the closet upside-down because she hated the fact that I always left it out, unzipped, with it's bowels exposed . . . because if she was just tossing it into the closet without any passive-aggressive anger, then 50% of the time it would land right-side up and 50% of the time it would land upside-down, but the gym bag ALWAYS seemed to land upside-down and, as I said, this had been happening for years so I had a decent sample size to evaluate, so I approached my wife about this and after a moment of denial she admitted that perhaps it did end up upside-down more than probability might dictate and that perhaps she was angry about my habit of leaving it out all the time, and so I told her I would try to put it away, and she promised not to throw it into the closet upside-down and the moral is: the key to a good marriage is clear communication and a grasp of basic probability.

You're Telling ME to Wear Sneakers?

So I walk into LA Fitness and the mousy girl working the desk-- if she had handles I could have dead-lifted her-- tells me I can't work out while wearing sandals . . . though I've been working out at LA Fitness for five years now while wearing sandals, as they are convenient foot-wear if you also want to swim or shower after you lift (plus I have a problem getting socks on my feet when it's humid, probably due to their hairiness) but she's insisting that I can't wear an "open toed shoe" while I lift weights, so I ask her about Crocs-- which are not technically open-toed-- and she considers this back-talk and says, "You want support when you work-out, so wear sneakers . . . okay?" and I'm about to get into the whole barefoot running thing and how I DON'T want support when I work out and how I often shoot baskets on their court barefoot, but I decide it's not worth it . . . and, finally, she did allow me on the floor with my sandals . . . but I had to promise that next time I would wear sneakers . . . and now I'm seriously considering getting some of those Vibram Five Fingers minimalist running shoes just to fuck with her.

Date Night With . . .

Once in a while it's fun to have a date night: an intimate dinner at a rustic spot (Sandy's diner) and then something special in the theater (the school play) and finally drinks out in a bay-side town (South Amboy) and then . . . well, you know what happens next . . . Terry gets in his car to head back to Helmetta and I get in mine and go home to see my wife (who was hanging out with her lady friends-- it's not like I deserted her to go on a date with Terry, and though the school play was actually quite entertaining-- A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum-- they had the heat on and it was that warm day and so it was 120 degrees inside, my socks were soaked with sweat, so we bailed slightly before the first act ended, and met up with a bar crawl in South Amboy, the land of a million bars and ate a world renowned Munck-ee Bar chicken quesadilla).

1/2/2010

We survived our first ski trip with the kids-- including packing (snow pants, gloves, hats, long underwear, fleeces and lots of socks); a 12 degree day with high winds (we went to an indoor water park-- it was even pretty cold in there, but they had a cool tube slide and Alex got hit with the 500 hundred gallon water drum and it pulled his bathing suit down); their first ski lessons; three nights paired with the kids in double beds, and driving home in a blizzard-- but in the end it will all be worth it, because our kids will be proficient skiers and what could be better than that . . . they will addicted to a sport that is not only dangerous, expensive, and contingent on the weather, but also may well disappear with the advance of global warming.

First World Problems

Ian woke me up at three in the morning because one of his Spiderman socks slipped off while he was sleeping and his foot was cold.

1/23/2009

It was freezing in my house, and so I asked my four year old son if he was cold and suggested he put some socks on-- but I guess my job as a parent is close to complete, because he said to me, "Why are you asking me that? If I'm cold, I'll tell you I am cold . . . If I don't tell you anything, then I'm not cold."

Winter Is Coming for Whitney

Whitney came to visit last night, but he was woefully unprepared for the cold weather-- he had his work shoes, thin socks, a light jacket, stylish but useless leather gloves, and he actually had to borrow my bomber hat (he refused a Yankees ski hat); this wasn't a problem, however, as we decided to skip the curling and instead meet the usual suspects at Charlie Brown's-- inside-- and, then while we were planning our next move-- to walk to New Brunswick-- Whitney caught a break and Mose gave us a ride to New Brunswick (I got shafted and had to ride in the back seat atop many layers of flattened cardboard boxes), but after a good time in the Corner Tavern and a better time at Giovanelli's (Whitney has learned something since his last visit-- though he ordered two sandwiches, he only ate a half of each one) Mose offered to drive us home-- another break for ill dressed Whitney, but then his luck came to an end and Mose got a flat (this was 2:30 AM and it was cold) and it took a while to wrench the lug nuts loose and an even longer while to get the jack to work and old man winter finally got his revenge on the poorly prepared man from Norfolk.